[freeflight]

> you are too lazy to make a massive effort to go see wild animals in their natural habitat

For the vast majority of people it's not being "too lazy" but simply not having the (financial) means to do a "real jungle safari".

Especially once you factor in children, which are often the target audience for zoos, paying for a jungle safari is quite a bit more expensive compared to just visiting the nearest zoo.

Mind you: I'm not disagreeing with your basic point of these places being cruel living conditions for animals, but I take issue with your labeling of the motivations for doing so (too lazy). In reality, only very few people have to financial means to make "real jungle safaris", even more so when you already have to take care of kids (which are expensive), a factor quite a few people on HN regularly overlook on quite a few issues. Not everybody is a well-paid coder/exec/entrepreneur (and it's naive to assume everybody could) with tons of disposable income, the vast majority of people mostly struggle to make the ends meet.

Sadly there are no easy "solutions" to any of this and for some children, it can be an experience which actually makes them aware of these issues in the very first place. I still remember seeing live Dolphins for the first time at the local zoo, and how sad and sick they looked compared to images/videos I've seen of wild ones. Years later it turned out that kid me was pretty spot on because it came to light that these dolphins had been drugged (and probably still are) so they can endure their living conditions [0].

[0] http://uk.whales.org/news/2012/07/german-zoo-data-reveals-ca...